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Environmental Quality
The vast majority of Utah’s drinking water systems comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations for arsenic levels. And the water utilities that don’t have been getting a helping hand from state environmental regulators, who are working with them to meet the tougher standard that went into effect on January 23, 2006.
In recent months, the Drinking Water Board has granted three-year extensions to 32 water utilities to allow them more time to meet the new standard of 10 parts per billion (ppb) arsenic in drinking water – much lower than the 50 ppb once considered safe to drink. The utilities are required to submit semi-annual reports so the Board can monitor their progress.
“We recognize the need to grant additional time to help those water utilities potentially faced with a huge capital expense,” said Kevin Brown, director of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Drinking Water (DDW).
For the past two years, the Division has been working with water utilities outlining strategies to enable them to meet the new standard. The options include abandoning the high-arsenic sources, or blending water from low-arsenic wells with water from those with higher readings. The Division also has worked with utilities to allow them to purchase filtration devices that fit on the homeowners’ faucet or develop alternative sources of water. Some districts have installed source water treatment systems.
EPA did find evidence to suggest that high levels of arsenic were making people sick, said Ken Bousfield, compliance manager for DDW. “This evidence came from studies of water users in Taiwan and Chile and showed increased levels of bladder and skin cancers.” A 1999 study in Utah’s Millard County showed exposures to high levels of arsenic did not produce those health impacts. “Higher rates of bladder and skin cancers were not found in the western Millard County study,” Bousfield said. “Nor were high rates of hypertension or prostate cancers found in the Taiwan and Chile studies.”
Arsenic is a naturally occurring contaminant that leaches into the groundwater from the surrounding rock. Although high concentrations of arsenic in drinking water are most often found associated with higher concentrations of metals, such as near past or present mining operations, arsenic concentrations can vary greatly from well to well in the same area. It can even change in the same well over time, according to Don Lore, an environmental scientist with DDW.
In 2001, when EPA proposed the new 10 ppb standard, DDW identified 86 water systems that would be impacted. The standard was put on hold when President Bush took office to enable additional review of the science behind the new standard. Eventually that hold was lifted and water systems were ordered to be in compliance by January 2006.
“In anticipation of this rule, we identified systems that could have problems and invited them to a number of training events,” Bousfield said. “We tried to direct water systems to the least-costly alternatives, and we have been aggressive in doing that. But there is the nagging issue of the cost ultimately being passed onto the customers.”
Magna really got serious about its arsenic problem, developing a central treatment facility that addresses not only arsenic but other contaminants as well. In order to pay for it, voters approved an $18 million bond. “Magna found a silver bullet,” Bousfield said. “The city is able to treat for arsenic, reduce total dissolved solids and address a future regulatory issue of perchlorate in a single treatment scheme.”
Park City, which had some of the highest arsenic in the state, opted to install a $3.7 million treatment technology that now has reduced the arsenic to one of the lowest levels in the state, at measurements of 2 ppb.
“Water utilities have taken different approaches,” Brown noted. “We tried to be flexible enough to allow them to develop their own solutions to meeting the new rule.”